Magic Ice, Magic Night

Well, this has been one surprising and wonderful night. I went out to the Magic Ice ice bar. That place is amazing! Imagine walking into a very very giant freezer turned into a disco club. It was pretty empty being a week night and basically only open for the ship’s tourists (it is in a rather small town), but oh, the potential! We’ve got to have one of these in Eugene! The bar really is made of ice with the vodka nicely displayed on ice shelves. No need for a freezer or putting ice cubes in your cups made of ice. The entrance has parkas and gloves for the unprepared. The cups are inverted elongated pyramids with a bowl in the bottom/top. Perfect for a few shots of your favorite drink. There are ice sculptures, ice mazes, paths, stairs and works of indescribable art. Even the seats and tables are ice with reindeer skins for seat covers. My favorite piece of art was a wall with a swirling mass of frozen mackerels in a spiral pattern. Real frozen mackerel in very clear ice. There were lots of things frozen in the ice to marvel at. Add to all this de-glow and black lighting, some good ambient music and it’s a party paradise. I could just imagine this place on a Friday night!

And so I thought my night would end until they started chatting up a night cap especially for the fjord we would pass through at midnight – a spicy rum concoction on the upper deck. The upper deck has been rather empty due to being outside and it being stormy. But tonight was a light mist. Not wanting to waste an opportunity for a little spicy rum, I made my way up. Quite a crowd gathered in the misty night. Soon the captain showed up with a trolley with a nice soup on it for everyone (he really did serve it himself!). Nice and warm, ahh… a nice way to end the evening. Then suddenly we all noticed that the distant walls of rock were quickly gathering to each side and suddenly we were within touching distance of walls of rock thousands of feet high. In the midnight dark, with only pale moonlight filtered through clouds lighting the walls, it was magical. Also a bit scary. Then suddenly music starts playing out of the loudspeakers, and I swear it was the theme to Titanic! Maybe not, but that was what I and several of the others around me were thinking as we glided past these towering walls. And, geez. if the pilot (wait, the captain was serving soup, who the hell was piloting this thing?) didn’t do a u turn at the end of the fjord, barely wide enough to spit across. Damn good piloting and we went back out. I grabbed a second and third cup of soup, ‘cause one never knows. And it was good.